Mid-August Drought Condition Worsening

“The record-breaking California drought is so bad that monitoring stations used to study earthquakes can detect the drying ground rising up. Measurements of these subtle movements, made using GPS instruments, suggest that the western United States is missing some 62 trillion gallons of water, enough to cover the entire region six inches deep.” Smithsonian Magazine (8/21/2014)

For the serious ‘conspiracy theorist’ in each of us, there’s more to the story (a bit slow in spots):